Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask that the pending amendment be set aside so I may call up amendment No. 3905.

Madam President, I guess I would like to start by saying I appreciate very much the sentiments that were recently expressed by the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from Texas, who is my friend who served with me as attorney general at the same time in our respective States, Texas and Rhode Island. I ask them to let me know when that new approach will begin because I am, frankly, not seeing much of it in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act procedures we are going through on the floor. I confess, I am a new Member of this body, and I do not understand why.

We heard Senator Dodd, the very distinguished Senator from Connecticut, who has served in this body for 27 years, describe how important this Chamber is and that it is the right of Senators to debate matters, not for the sake of ventilating themselves but toward actually getting a vote on a real amendment on a matter of real significance.

We had one vote on a committee amendment. Not one Senator has achieved getting a vote, and we are on a very short timeframe. I may be new, but I will tell you that in the 1 year I have served, I have presided a great

deal. The Presiding Officer, the Senator from Minnesota, and I have both spent a lot of time in that chair. It is a wonderful place to sit, and you get a great view and a great education as to what goes on in the Chamber.

I can recall over and over hearing my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, as mad as they could be, complaining bitterly because the majority had offered them only 10 amendments on a bill or only 20 amendments on a bill. I cannot get one called up.

Let me first say, this is an important issue. On the one hand, we have to deal with perhaps the greatest danger our country faces at this moment, which is the threat that comes from international terrorism, and we have at the same time to deal with one of the basic principles of our Government--freedom, freedom from, among other things, Government surveillance, unless it is done properly and by the law.

This is not some new idea. It goes back to the Bill of Rights, where the very Founders of this country mandated that before the Government could intrude into the persons, places, houses, and effects of Americans, they had to get permission from a court.

The balance between freedom and security is an important one, a historic one. So this is no minor issue on which to avoid real debate, and the amendments are important ones. The amendments involve the immunity issue about which Senator Dodd spoke so passionately. This is a very important issue.

As I see it, we have some cleaning up to do in this body as a result of a real mess the Bush administration left us. They could have gotten a court order, and we know perfectly well that if a court order had been obtained, there would be no issue of immunity for us to address. A company following a court order is protected. End of story. They couldn't be troubled to get a court order to protect these companies they are so concerned about now. But you do not necessarily need a court order. You can actually get a certification from the appropriate Government official using language this Congress has provided, and it will also provide protection to companies that cooperate in Government surveillance, as long as they have been notified properly through the certification process.

One would think the litigation would be over, if that certification process had been complied with. It would be a slam dunk. Which raises the logical conclusion that for some reason, the Government did not comply with the certification process. I don't know why they did that. I don't know if anybody else knows why they did that. It could be being obtuse and stubborn and insisting it had to be done under the President's unitary article II authority that they purposefully, deliberately failed to follow the certification process to prove that point they wanted to prove.

If that is the case, they have walked these phone companies into all this concern we now have to address for no purpose whatsoever. But now we do have to address the problem. No matter how they got into it, we have this problem to address, and it is not an easy problem.

One side says: Well, blanket immunity. Well, that is fine, but you are taking away rights and due process of people who are in court right now. A judge has looked at this case and he didn't throw it out. There is nothing to suggest that the litigation going on right now is not entirely legitimate. So if we do that, we are taking away real rights of real Americans that are currently in play right now before a court.

I don't know of a time the Congress has ever done that. As a former prosecutor, like the Presiding Officer, the very notion that it is the legislature's job to go into ongoing legitimate litigation and make decisions about who should win and who should lose seems to me a spectacular trespass over the doctrine of separation of powers. I hope my colleagues in this body who are in the Federalist Society would be concerned about this separation of powers.

On the other hand, we could strip the legislation of its immunity entirely and leave the companies in the litigation. That is not a great solution either. There is a problem with that solution. The problem with that solution is that the Bush administration has bound and gagged the company defendants--instructed them they may not defend themselves. So here you have legitimate American corporations in legitimate litigation being told by the Government that they may not speak, they may not answer, they may not defend themselves. That doesn't seem like a great outcome either.

Well, an amendment I wish to offer, the one I just tried to call up, proposes a potential solution. If the Government is going to tell them they can't defend themselves, then in all decency shouldn't the Government step in for them and say: OK, we are going to bind you and we are going to gag you in this ring of litigation combat, but we are going to step in for you and not leave you unable to defend yourself? Isn't that the most decent, basic thing you could expect the Government to do? That is what this amendment would do. It would substitute the Government for the defendant corporations that the Government has bound and gagged in this litigation--muzzled.

It would do another thing: It would make sure that a court decided that these companies had in fact acted in good faith before they were given that relief. They have told us they have acted in good faith, but we are a legislature. Good faith is a finding the courts make. We are not judges. We haven't heard from all sides. We haven't had hearings, such as a court would have to get to the bottom of this.

There is an easy way to do it. You let the FISA Court, which has the secrecy necessary to get to the bottom of this, make the determination, the fundamental determination: Did these companies, in fact, act in good faith? That is a basic point of entry. We have all assumed it to be true, but it is not our job as Members of Congress to decide on the good faith of an individual litigant in a matter that is before a court.

I think this is a very legitimate amendment. It may not be germane postcloture. It may never come up as a result of this. Maybe it is just the new Senator. Poor kid, all this work on these bills. Doesn't he know the merits don't matter around here? Maybe it is a situation related to me not knowing my way around here yet. But I don't think so. Because Senator Feinstein, who has been here for a very long time, who is very distinguished, who is one of the most bipartisan Senators in this Chamber, if not the most bipartisan Senator in this Chamber, has a very similar piece of legislation. She has taken the good faith test in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and picked it out as a separate, solitary piece of legislation, and she is pursuing that. That amendment can't be called up either.

You could say: Well, maybe it is because I am a Democrat; they are shutting down all the Democrats. But my amendment is cosponsored by Arlen Specter, the very distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, who has been the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. It is the Specter- Whitehouse amendment. I don't see how you could have a better credential, a better bipartisan credential than to have the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee as the cosponsor of the amendment. And yet we can't call it up, and because of the cloture motion that has been filed, it may never be called up.

I think we are doing serious work, and I think we should get votes on these amendments. I know some of my colleagues have said: Well, you should defer to the committee bill. The committee bill was so good, it was bipartisan, it passed 13 to 2. Well, I was in that committee. Yes, it passed 13 to 2, but an awful lot of us said in our remarks on that bill that we passed it out of that committee in order to work on it further in the Judiciary Committee and in order to move amendments on the floor. It did not pass with a 13-to-2 vote of Senators saying this is ready to go to the President; this is ready to clear the Senate. It passed on a 13-to-2 vote of Senators who knew that the bill was going to the Judiciary Committee and who knew that the bill was going to the floor and had reason to expect the ordinary courtesies of this body to be able to offer amendments would be honored.

In fact, the amendment I tried to offer yesterday that was objected to, that I can't call up, I raised in the Intelligence Committee. I was told by the executive branch officials there--and I should say that throughout this process I hope nobody would challenge how

carefully my office has worked with the administration to get these things right, to get technical language worked through properly--I was told by the executive branch officials that the way I had written the amendment caused technical difficulties. So I didn't pursue it in the Intelligence Committee. I withdrew it, noting that we would work through the technical difficulties and then bring it up again later on.

Nobody said then, oh, Senator Whitehouse, there is going to be no later on; the committee vote is all you will get. Nobody said that. Because that would violate the history and traditions of the Senate, because it would be wrong, and because it wasn't the program. It wasn't the plan at the time. I feel it has been represented to me that these amendments would be voted on, and I feel that representation has been dishonored by the procedure we are in right now.

I want to read something. I prepared remarks in the event that this amendment was going to go in. Of course, I thought it was going to go in. I had the Republican former chairman of the Judiciary Committee as a cosponsor and it addresses the biggest question in this legislation. It provides a potential resolution of the conflict between the two arguments. Why on Earth would it not be something that I would be able to exercise my traditional right to raise on the floor? So I planned ahead and I wrote remarks for that occasion. Here is what I wrote at the very end of the remarks.

Madam President, whether this amendment passes or fails, I

would like to say that it is the product of a truly

commendable process. Everybody here knows the old saw that

the making of law is like the making of sausage. You might

like the results, but you don't want to see what goes into

making it. Not so here. This amendment and Senator

Feinstein's are the results of many hours of thoughtful,

bipartisan consideration, hard work by Senators and their

staffs, reasoned and respectful committee debate, and what I

am sure will be thorough debate on the floor.

Those are the remarks I wrote. And I have to say right now, those words taste like ashes in my mouth. I hope the spirit that Senator Alexander and Senator Cornyn brought to the floor a moment ago will begin to animate the FISA debate, and that legitimate--and I believe my Republican colleagues will concede these are legitimate--and sincere-- and I believe my Republican colleagues will concede these are sincere-- and important amendments have a chance to be raised and debated and voted on here on the floor of the Senate.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate very much the arguments made by the very distinguished Senator from Missouri, who is also the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee and possesses great experience in this area. My point, though, is that all these arguments are for naught if the simple courtesy of a Senator being allowed to vote on his amendment is not honored.

This particular amendment being nongermane postcloture means it may very well be squeezed out by the procedural devices the Republican leader has applied. So my simple question is, if I may ask it through the Chair to the distinguished Senator from Missouri, the Republican manager of this bill, can we assure Senator Specter and myself that this amendment will, at the appropriate time in this legislation, receive a vote?

Madam President, first, let me thank the Senator from Oregon for his very kind words, probably too kind words, but that is one of the glorious conventions of this body.

I salute his leadership in this area because perhaps the most significant thing that has been accomplished so far in this FISA dispute, that has been accomplished in a bipartisan fashion, in a manner in which great credit reflects on Vice Chairman Bond who is here on the Senate floor, is consensus has been reached that when an American travels overseas, the rights they believe they enjoy here in these United States, the rights the Constitution guarantees them here in these United States, travel with them and cannot be overruled at the whim of the very same branch of Government that seeks the surveillance. And the reason that was able to take place is because the Senator from Oregon had the foresight to put together the amendment that he and Senator Feingold and I argued for in the Intelligence Committee. I express my personal appreciation to him for his wisdom in that regard.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside in order that I might call up amendment No. 3908.

Madam President, I am disappointed to hear that. The Senator, of course, clearly has that right. As everyone in this body knows, we are facing a deadline of February 1 to conclude this legislation. There is considerable other business related to the stimulus package, given our economic concerns in this country, and I would hope now that the FISA bill has been called up, that we are on this bill here on the floor, that amendments to the title I provisions we are

working on now could be called up and considered. It would certainly move things along in the process if they could be called up and debated so that when it came time for a vote, we could move more expeditiously through the process. I hope very much this is not a signal that it is anyone's intention to slow down this process.

We saw in August how unfortunate the result can be when this body's time to give a major issue such as this significant attention is compressed. Indeed, I refer to that unfortunate August situation as ``the August stampede.'' I don't think we reflected great credit on this institution when we did what we did back then.

The effort we are undertaking now is an effort, in fact, to remedy some of those concerns. There has been significant bipartisan effort to get us to this point. While there are clearly remaining points of disagreement, I would think it would be in everyone's interest to work through those issues and to give these different amendments a chance to be voted on. For instance, the amendment I had hoped to call up is one that is supported not only by myself but Chairman Rockefeller, the distinguished chairman of the Intelligence Committee. It is supported by Chairman Leahy, the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee. It is supported by Senator Schumer, the distinguished Senator from New York. It is supported by Senator Feingold, the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin who serves, like myself, on both the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. It addresses a very important issue to this body which is the terms on which we will allow this administration to spy on Americans.

It is an amendment that a lot of work has gone into. It reflects a convergence of ideas that was developed by Senator Schumer and Senator Feingold in the Judiciary Committee, that we developed in the Intelligence Committee, again, through an often bipartisan process. Senator Feingold played a critical role in both committees in advancing this issue. We have worked very carefully with the Department of Justice to incorporate changes that they have recommended as technical assistance. It is a meaningful, worthy, well-thought-out amendment that merits consideration and discussion on the floor. It relates to an issue that is a fairly simple one but in order to understand it, you have to have a basic understanding, at least, of wiretap surveillance.

As United States Attorney and as Rhode Island's Attorney General, I oversaw wiretap and surveillance investigations, and I am familiar with the procedures. With any electronic surveillance, whether it is in a domestic law enforcement context or intelligence gathering on international terrorism, what you find is that information about Americans is intercepted incidentally. You have, as all the prosecutors in this body well know, including the distinguished Presiding Officer, the target of your investigation. The target has certain rights; a warrant requirement under the Constitution, for instance. But what you find is that once you have surveillance up on your target, they obviously talk to other people. Those other people who are incidentally intercepted in the surveillance also have rights as well.

In domestic law enforcement, there are clear and established procedures for what is called minimizing the interception of the conversations to the extent that they touch on the incidentally intercepted person who is not the target of the surveillance. The minimization procedures govern the collection and the retention of this information to ensure that the privacy of innocent Americans is protected. These are sensible measures. I have been in the trailers with the FBI agents as they are switching on and off to honor the minimization procedures. But one of the key elements of these minimization procedures is the knowledge on the part of the surveilling agency that they are subject to court oversight. That is natural in the domestic law enforcement context. You are operating under a court order to begin with. In the domestic context, it happens as a simple consequence of there being a court order in the first place.

When you are dealing with Americans abroad and when they are swept up in international surveillance for national security purposes, the situation can be different. We have had to provide for these minimization procedures. Under the Senate Intelligence bill, the court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is now being given the authority to approve the minimization procedures when an American is listened to incidentally in surveillance that targets another individual. The court has the authority to approve the procedures. But what was missing is that the court did not have the authority to determine whether the procedures it has approved are actually being followed. You would think that would be obvious. If you are going to set it up so that the court can approve minimization procedures, should it not follow as a matter of simple logic that the court should have the authority to see whether the procedures the court approved are in fact being followed?

We have worked very carefully with Vice Chairman Bond, with Chairman Rockefeller, with the technical folks at the Director of National Intelligence Office, and at the Department of Justice. At present, we have a situation in which it has been agreed that the court will have the power to determine whether its rules are being followed if the target of the surveillance is an American in the United States. We have also reached agreement that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will have the authority to determine whether its rules are being followed if the target is an American overseas. The issue that remains involves those cases in which the target is a foreign person but they are in touch with a U.S. person, an American, who is being incidentally intercepted because they are in touch with a foreign target--because the foreign target has called them, because the foreign target is discussing them, because they have called the foreign target, whatever.

I cannot for the life of me understand why this is a difference that we are obliged to come to the Senate floor to decide. It would seem to me that when the purpose of the exercise is enforcing minimization procedures that benefit the U.S. person who is incidentally intercepted, it should not matter whether the target is an American in the United States or an American overseas or a foreign person. The person we are trying to protect is the U.S. person incidentally swept into the surveillance. So the purpose of this amendment, if I were to be permitted to call it up, would be to see to it that the court, which has the authority to determine the minimization procedures when there is a foreign target who talks to a United States person, should have what would seem to me obviously consequent authority to determine whether those rules it has approved are being followed.

It may even be that it is so inherent in the nature of a court that subsequent litigation would determine that in fact the court does have that right. It comes, in its very nature as an article III court, to have the authority to determine whether its rules and whether its orders are being followed. But rather than force it to that point, it would be better if we simply cleared up the matter here.

Again, I regret that merely calling up the amendment at this point is being objected to. I hope this is not a signal that we are trying to recreate, to put it mildly, the hectic atmosphere of the August stampede. I would like as quickly as possible to work through the amendments that relate to title I. There are a number of them. I expect we will be staying rather late if we can't start working through them now. But when the time comes, I will come back to the floor and again seek permission to call up this amendment; I hope at that time with more success.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the very distinguished vice chairman of the committee for his description of his views on this matter. I know they are honestly held and founded in his beliefs.

I do take some issue with his recollection of the travel of this in the Intelligence Committee. I thought I heard the distinguished vice chairman say this amendment had been voted down in the Intelligence Committee. It is my recollection that I withdrew it because there were technical concerns that were described by some of the officials from the Office of National Intelligence and from the Department of Justice who were present.

Indeed, it was that withdrawal and willingness to work to try to find a better amendment that resulted in the very commendable process by which the distinguished vice chairman agreed to allow the court to oversee compliance with its own rule in those two circumstances I mentioned earlier: where the target is an American, either overseas or at home.

Other than that, the only other point I would add is that I think it is probably a situation unique in the annals of American law that an American court would be provided the authority to approve a rule or make an order but denied the authority to determine whether it was complied with. I can certainly think of no situation in our law or in our history where that has ever been the case.

I know the distinguished Senator from Maryland seeks the floor. I yield the floor, and I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to the life and work of one of our Nation's great artists, Sheila Isham, on her 80th birthday.

Sheila was born in New York City, 80 years ago today. She grew up in Cedarhurst, just outside the city, and on an 80-acre island in the St. Lawrence River in Canada, which for years lacked both electricity and running water. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1950 and married Heyward Isham, an officer in the U.S. Foreign Service, and the couple moved to Berlin. There began her path to becoming an artist.

Sheila became the first foreigner to gain admission to the Berlin Art Academy in the years following World War II. There, she studied with Hans Uhlman, a student of abstract painter Kasimir Malevich, and absorbed the works of Wassily Kandinsky.

In 1955 Heyward Isham was posted to the American embassy in Moscow, and the Ishams moved to Russia, where life became very restricted. Sheila has told of having to import several years' worth of food from outside the country, of being watched and followed constantly, and of being unable to meet with other artists or to draw freely. A 2004 profile in the St. Petersburg Times reported that ``once, Isham was almost arrested by a vigilant Soviet officer who noticed that an American was drawing a building, which, according to Isham, turned out to be a center for KGB interrogations.''

But Sheila continued her work. She met George Kostakis, a prominent collector of the Russian avant-garde, including works by Malevich, Kandinsky, Tatlin, Popova, Goncharova, and Larionov, and she traveled through Georgia, St. Petersburg, Yalta, Sochi, and Tblisi to sketch and meet with local artists and writers.

After a few years back in the United States, Sheila and her family traveled to Hong Kong, where she would live and work for 5 years. She taught contemporary arts at the Chinese University, exhibited her work in China and Japan, and studied with a master of classical Chinese calligraphy. ``I chose calligraphy because it seemed to me to be abstract and perfect at the same time,'' she said.

On her return to America in 1965, Sheila began painting, exploring colors and the nexus between Eastern and Western cultures. She would later live and travel in France, Haiti, India, and finally New York, where she has made her home.

Sheila Isham's work is part of the permanent collections of some of America's most important institutions, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has been the subject of major one-person exhibitions at the Smithsonian, the Corcoran, and the Russian Museum, and countless gallery and traveling exhibitions, including at the Island Arts Gallery in Newport, Rhode Island.

Sheila's life has not been without periods of darkness. Susan Fisher Sterling, the chief curator of the National Museum for Women in the Arts, wrote: ``In unpredictable and often dramatic ways, Sheila Isham has been challenged by forces that threatened to overwhelm her . . . yet, despite these upheavals, her spirited work prevails.''

After a fire destroyed many works in her Washington, DC, studio, Sheila said: ``I thought that the burnt studio looked like a painting, like a myth, something you might want to take the picture of. I had to come to terms with that. I became freer in a way.''

When her daughter Sandra contracted HIV/AIDS through a blood transfusion, Sheila began work on the enormous, five-painting Victoria series, which she calls ``at once a celebration and a working through the darkest period of my life.'' She said: ``It spans all human emotions from love to terror to hope and finally triumph and joy. It is an epic poem in paint, expressed in brilliant color and strong forms.'' The series was exhibited for the first time in its entirety by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2005, 9 years after Sandra passed away.

Sheila Isham's work reflects the iconic melting pot of our Nation's history. Though she draws inspiration from places as diverse as postwar Berlin, Russia, China, Haiti, France, and New York City, her work remains clearly and vibrantly American. Her art, which resides all over the world, is itself an ambassador both for her creative vision and for her country. We are enriched by her talent and her acquaintance.

Alexander Borovsky, head curator of contemporary art at the Russian State Museum, wrote this:

As an artist, Isham is marked by an incredible

restlessness. Even the calm of an ``oasis'' created by her

own hand . . . is only relative. She continually explores new

paths and returns to the old. Few artists--including Isham, I

expect--can say precisely what they are seeking. Having

mastered the art of return, Sheila Isham knows to whom it is

that she returns--to herself. Truly a rare gift in

contemporary art.

I come to the Senate floor today to offer congratulations to Sheila on her 80th birthday. I trust this day will be an occasion for all of us to recognize her extraordinary contribution to American art, and anticipate the many achievements still to come.

Mr. President, I wish to celebrate the extraordinary achievements of petty officer Scott Higgins of my State of Rhode Island, who today will be awarded the Coast Guard Commendation Medal for his efforts in the heroic rescue of the crew of the sailboat Sean Seamour II off the coast of New Jersey in May.

On May 7, Aviation Machinery Technician 2nd Class Higgins was part of a four-man Coast Guard HH-60 helicopter crew, including LCDR Nevada Smith, LT J.G. Aaron Nelson, and aviation survival technician 2nd class Drew Dazzo, deployed in response to a distress signal from the 44-foot sailing vessel Sean Seamour II. The vessel, on a recreational sailing trip from Green Coves Spring, FL, to Portugal's Azores Islands, had capsized amidst the hurricane-force winds of Subtropical Storm Andrea. The three sailors aboard were forced to evacuate to a small raft just before their ship was swallowed by the ocean.

Higgins, serving as flight mechanic, worked closely with Nelson, who piloted the helicopter, and Dazzo, the team's rescue swimmer, to execute their mission. Working quickly and expertly, Higgins lowered Dazzo over and over again into the towering waves to reach the sailboat crew. Once the first two sailors had been lifted to safety, Higgins and Nelson demonstrated what the Coast Guard's Summary of Action called ``the utmost of crew coordination, teamwork and aeronautical skill'' as they hoisted Dazzo only 30 feet above the water to position him closer to the life raft and the last survivor.

As Higgins worked to raise the final survivor from the ocean, he felt the hoist cable begin to fray with the rescue basket still 100 feet below the helicopter and the rescue swimmer still in the water. Despite suffering from exhaustion and the effects of saltwater inhalation, Dazzo waited to request an emergency pickup until he could see that the last survivor was in the aircraft.

Again demonstrating extraordinary skill and teamwork in a life-or- death situation, Higgins managed to get the rescued sailor safely aboard and immediately redeploy the compromised hoist cable to retrieve Dazzo. In the midst of an intense storm, all aboard were safely returned to shore.

Higgins and the rest of his team successfully rescued the crew of the Sean Seamour II despite a punishing storm that threatened their lives and the lives of those they were sent to help. As the Coast Guard's Summary of Action stated:

High winds, treacherous seas and extreme off-shore

distances created a situation that required intense

operational risk management, exacting crew coordination, and

incredible skill and courage. Without the complete

competence, concentration, and professionalism of every

crewmember, this operation could have had a disastrous

outcome. Each crewmember was essential to the life saving

rescue of three mariners.

The Coast Guard Commendation Medal recognizes meritorious service resulting in unusual and outstanding achievement. The courage, bravery, and skill demonstrated by Machinery Technician Higgins in May shows that he is more than worthy of this great honor.

I offer my congratulations to petty officer Scott Higgins and to all those whom the Coast Guard recognizes today. His achievements have brought honor both to him and to his home state of Rhode Island.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 15 minutes and that the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, be recognized next if no Member of the minority seeks recognition.

Madam President, just recently, the Attorney General of the United States published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times on our ongoing work to improve the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, what we call FISA. This follows closely on a similar opinion piece by the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, in the New York Times.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record each of these documents.

Madam President, both opinion pieces go on at some length about the importance of new legislation on foreign surveillance activities. They devote paragraph after paragraph to this issue. But the two leaders of America's law enforcement and intelligence communities completely ignore, never once mention, the issue that is actually in dispute; that is, on what terms will we allow this administration to spy on Americans?

We all agree to unleash our intelligence agencies on foreign targets of foreign surveillance. There is no question there. The heart of the debate is the question of spying on Americans, one, when they are outside the country, or, two, when they are incidentally intercepted by surveillance targeted at someone else.

This, the wiretapping of Americans, has been the entire subject of our work on surveillance. And yet Judge Mukasey and Admiral McConnell never once mentioned the topic. There are only two possibilities and each is regrettable. One is that these two gentlemen simply don't know what is going on, which seems unlikely since Director McConnell has participated in hearings on the subject, and we discussed in detail our concern about wiretapping Americans, and members of my staff are working through the details of the issue on a nearly daily basis with lawyers at the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice.

So that leaves only one alternative that these two gentlemen do know what is going on and just chose to talk past the issue, ignore its very existence. That is a shame, and I hope it is not the early propaganda phase of a Bush administration effort to replicate the August stampede that got us into this pickle in the first place.

Since they have not mentioned it, let me tell you what the problem is. The Protect America Act passed in the August stampede contains no statutory limitation on this administration's ability to spy on Americans traveling abroad whenever it wants, for whatever purpose. Let me repeat that. The Protect America Act contains no statutory restriction on this administration's ability to spy on Americans traveling abroad whenever it wants, for whatever purpose.

The only limitation that now exists on that power is section 2.5 of Executive order No. 12333, which says the administration will not wiretap Americans overseas unless the Attorney General determines that person is an agent of a foreign power.

The problem, as I noted in a speech in this Chamber recently, is a secret Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel memo related to surveillance activities which says this:

An Executive order cannot limit a President. There is no

constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new

Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms

of a previous Executive order. Rather than violate an

Executive order, the President has instead modified or waived

it.

In other words, the only thing standing between Americans traveling overseas and a Government wiretap is an Executive order that this President believes he is under no obligation to obey and may secretly disregard. The only thing standing between Americans traveling overseas and a Government wiretap is an Executive order this President believes he has no obligation to obey and may secretly disregard.

So for months we have worked to repair the flawed bill of August, and the question of spying on Americans has been the issue--the issue--of concern. I and my staff, many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and their staffs have been working diligently and in good faith to solve this problem. What I have seen in these negotiations has been a thoughtful exchange by well-intentioned people who are committed to keeping America safe without trampling on the rights of Americans.

We have talked not only with each other on both sides of the aisle but also

with people in this administration, including staff attorneys at the DOJ and DNI. We have worked almost all the way toward making sure Americans who are incidentally intercepted enjoy full, meaningful minimization protections. I think we have worked all the way toward making sure a court order is required to wiretap an American who happens to be overseas.

For both Director of National Intelligence McConnell and Attorney General Mukasey to write an op-ed as if the issue of spying on Americans abroad has no role in this debate, when it has been the key and central issue in this debate, is, frankly, disappointing. One wonders how big the elephant in the room has to be before they are willing to acknowledge it. Ignoring this problem may serve the Bush- Cheney interest in unaccountable executive power, but it does not protect Americans' privacy and it does not make Americans safer.

I urge my colleagues to remember that the issue we have been grappling with is a simple one: On what terms will we allow this administration to spy on Americans? It is a question with real implications for our democracy, for our civil liberties, and ultimately for the security of this Nation.

Unless we really believe that when Americans leave our country we leave our civil rights behind, unless we really believe this Government should have unfettered power to eavesdrop on conversations of families vacationing in Europe or soldiers serving in Iraq, then the authority to spy on Americans abroad cannot be left under the exclusive control of this administration. It is a matter that must be solved in this legislation that Congress must pass to restore the Protect America Act to a fair appreciation of civil liberties.

That is why we have been working on this question so hard. It is a serious question. I wish the two gentlemen leading the key Departments of Government involved had recognized that it exists, and I urge my colleagues to insist on the protections we have worked so hard for--to protect Americans from surveillance in a way the intelligence community has come to support.

We have come a long way. Chairman Rockefeller is owed our gratitude, as is Chairman Leahy. Their leadership in this has been spectacular. I also wish to express appreciation for the efforts of the distinguished ranking members, Senators Kit Bond and Arlen Specter. We are on the verge of a historic moment in the rights of Americans and in making sure that when they travel abroad it is clear that they take their rights with them. Let us not let this moment slip away.

Madam President, how much time remains of my 15 minutes?

Let me say one thing quickly, and we will come back to it, I believe, when amendments come forward.

With respect to the question of how we deal with the litigation that presently involves certain telephone communications carriers, I think everybody in this Chamber should remember the impossible predicament in which those companies have been placed. There are litigants, private litigants in court, in an ongoing action, and the Government has come in and told them: You may not defend yourself. It has told them: You may not say one word in defense of this litigation. National security is asserted as the reason, and all of the threats that come with violations of national security are in play.

So there they are, private litigants in private litigation, and the Government has stepped in and said: You may not defend yourself. I think we have to do something about that. Along with what the ranking member of the Judiciary said earlier, the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Specter, I think the only decent thing we can expect the Government to do is to at least step in itself for these litigants. If they are going to tell the carriers they can't defend themselves in court in ongoing litigation, the least this Government should be able to do is to step in and say: We will step in and substitute ourselves for you.

So I applaud what Senator Specter has done with his substitution bill, and I look forward to a discussion of that.

I yield the remainder of my time, and I yield floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, and that I recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, let me first say how moved I am to be on the Senate floor after the remarks of the very distinguished Senator from Hawaii commemorating this day. But I rise to discuss a different question, a question that involves the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We will shortly consider making right the things that are wrong with the so-called Protect America Act, a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August at the behest of the Bush administration. It is worth for a moment considering why making this right is so important.

President Bush pressed this legislation not only to establish how our Government can spy on foreign agents but how his administration can spy on Americans. Make no mistake, the legislation we passed in August is significantly about spying on Americans--a business this administration should not be allowed to get into except under the closest supervision.

We have a plain and tested device for keeping tabs on Americans. It is our Constitution. Our Constitution has as its most elemental provision the separation of governmental powers into three separate branches. When the Government feels it is necessary to spy on its own citizens, each branch has a role. The executive branch executes the laws and conducts surveillance. The legislative branch sets the boundaries that protect Americans from improper Government surveillance. The judicial branch oversees whether the Government has followed the Constitution and the laws that protect U.S. citizens from violations of their privacy and their civil rights.

It sounds basic, but even an elementary understanding of this balance of powers eludes the Bush administration. So now we have to repair this flawed and shoddy Protect America Act.

Why are we in Congress so concerned about this legislation? Why is it so vital that we energetically insert the role of Congress and the courts when the Bush administration seeks to determine the rules under which it will spy on Americans? Because look what the Bush administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking.

For years, under the Bush administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified, secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own exams, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those secret opinions and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island's Governor, and State attorney general, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on.

To give an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these secret OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note-taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself, Mr. President; I will read all three and then discuss each one.

One:

An Executive order cannot limit a President. There is no

constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new

Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms

of a previous Executive order. Rather than violate an

Executive order, the President has instead modified or waived

it.

No. 2:

The President, exercising his constitutional authority

under article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful

exercise of the President's authority under article II.

And 3:

The Department of Justice is bound by the President's legal

determinations.

Let's start with No. 1. Bear in mind that the so-called Protect America Act that was stampeded through this great body in August provides no--zero--statutory protections for Americans traveling abroad from Government wiretapping--none if you are a businesswoman traveling on business overseas; none if you are a father taking the kids on vacation to the Caribbean; none if you are visiting your aunts or uncles in Italy or Ireland; none even if you are a soldier of the United States of America in uniform serving overseas.

The Bush administration provided in that hastily passed law no statutory restrictions on their ability to wiretap you at will, to tap your cell phone, your e-mail--whatever--once you are outside the borders of the United States. The only restriction is an Executive order called 12333 which limits executive branch surveillance to Americans whom the Attorney General determines to be agents of a foreign power. That is what the Executive order says.

But what does this administration say about Executive orders?

An Executive order cannot limit a President. There is no

constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new

Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms

of a previous Executive order. Rather than violate an

Executive order, the President has instead modified or waived

it.

``Whenever [the President] wishes to depart from the terms of a previous Executive order,'' he may do so because ``an Executive order cannot limit a President.'' And he does not even have to change the Executive order or give notice that he is violating it because by ``depart[ing] from the Executive order,'' the President ``has instead modified or waived it.''

So unless Congress acts, here is what legally prevents this President from wiretapping Americans traveling abroad at will: nothing. Nothing. That was among the most egregious flaws in the bill passed during the August stampede orchestrated by the Bush administration, and this OLC opinion shows why we need to correct it.

Here is No. 2:

The President, exercising his constitutional authority

under article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful

exercise of the President's authority under article II.

That is right, the President, according to the George W. Bush Office of Legal Counsel, has article II power to determine the scope of his article II power. Never mind a little decision called Marbury v. Madison written by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803 establishing the proposition that it is emphatically the province and the duty

of the judicial department to say what the law is.

Does this administration agree that it is emphatically the province and the duty of the judicial department to say what the President's authority is under article II of the Constitution? No. It is the President, according to this Office of Legal Counsel, who decides the limits of his own article II power. The question ``whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President's authority under article II'' is to be determined by the President's own minions ``exercising his constitutional authority under article II.'' It really makes one wonder: Where do they get these people? You have to be smart, you have to be really bright to get a job within the Office of Legal Counsel. How can people who are so smart be so misguided?

And then it gets worse. Remember point 3:

The Department of Justice is bound by the President's legal

determinations.

Let that sink in a minute. ``The Department of Justice is bound by the President's legal determinations.'' We are a nation of laws, not of men. This Nation was founded in rejection of the royalist principle that ``the king can do no wrong.'' Our Attorney General swears an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States. We are not some banana republic in which the officials all have to kowtow to a supreme leader.

Imagine this in another context. Imagine a general counsel to a major U.S. corporation telling his board of directors: In this company, the counsel's office is bound by the legal determinations of the CEO.

The board ought to throw that lawyer out. That is malpractice and probably even unethical.

Wherever you are, if you are watching this, do me a favor: The next time you are in Washington, DC, take a taxi some evening to the U.S. Department of Justice. Stand outside. Look up at that building shining against the starry night. Look at the sign outside: The United States Department of Justice. Think of the heroes who have served there. Think of the battles fought. Think of the late nights, the brave decisions, the hard work of advancing and protecting our democracy that has been done in those halls. Think about how all that makes you feel.

Then think about this statement:

The Department of Justice is bound by the President's legal

determinations.

If you don't feel a difference from what you were feeling a moment ago, well, I guess congratulations because there is probably a job for you somewhere in the Bush administration. Consider the sad irony that this theory was crafted in that very building by the George W. Bush Office of Legal Counsel.

In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this: One, I don't have to follow my own rules, and if I break them, I don't have to tell you that I am breaking them; two, I get to determine what my own powers are; and three, the Department of Justice doesn't tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.

When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up. We should not even be having this discussion, but here we are. I implore my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Reject these feverish legal theories. I understand political loyalty; trust me, I do. But let's also be loyal to this great institution we serve in the legislative branch of Government. Let us also be loyal to the Constitution we took an oath to defend from enemies foreign and domestic. And let us be loyal to the American people who live each day under that Constitution's principles and protections.

We simply cannot put the authority to wiretap Americans whenever they step outside America's boundaries under the exclusive control and supervision of the executive branch. We do not allow it when Americans are at home; we should not allow it when they travel abroad.

The principles of congressional legislation and oversight and of judicial approval and review are simple and longstanding, and Americans deserve their protection wherever on God's green Earth they may travel.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is with great reluctance that I plan to oppose the AMT bill before us. While I strongly support providing AMT relief to middle-class taxpayers, I simply cannot support an AMT patch that is not paid for. Let's be clear on what we are doing here today: we are voting on a bill that will require us to increase our deficit by $50 billion. Our children and grandchildren will have to pay

back the funds we are borrowing today, with interest.

There are many ways we could have been responsible and paid for this measure, but the President of the United States and the Republican Congress have refused to consider them. One option in a bill that I introduced would have paid for this AMT relief by increasing the taxes on investment profits for millionaires, many of whom enjoy an unjust tax benefit that allows them to pay a lower tax rate than struggling middle-class families. Under my proposal, a small number of taxpayers with incomes over $1 million per year could have funded a patch to benefit approximately 20 million Americans.

The President of the United States and the Republicans in Congress believe that borrowing money from foreign nations, for our children to repay, is the best way to finance our government. I do not, and therefore I must oppose this measure.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 15 minutes each.

Mr. President, it is an unfortunate reality that with so much at stake in the ballot box, organized efforts to suppress the vote go nearly as far back as the right to vote itself. These efforts have cast a shadow over what Justice Earl Warren called ``the essence of a Democratic society'': the right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice.

The first voter suppression in America was direct: blanket restrictions based on race, based on gender, based on class. Over the years, these overt efforts were eventually replaced by more indirect and nefarious means: poll taxes, literacy tests, Whites-only primaries, and myriad other disenfranchisement laws aimed directly at minority voters. These crafty legal obstacles were often supplemented by blunt physical violence. But despite the many and varied efforts to impede the franchise, American democracy has shown an extraordinary resilience--and the American people have shown an abiding dedication, sometimes paying with life and limb, to defend the right of their fellow citizens to vote.

This Senate, of course, has a checkered past on voting rights. For many years, the Senate is where civil rights bills came to die, stalled by filibusters and tangled in parliamentary technique. Eventually, of course, the tide turned, and Congress ushered in a series of laws that remain among the most important ever enacted: the 24th amendment banning poll taxes; the Civil Rights Act; and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned literacy tests, authorized the Attorney General to appoint Federal voting examiners to ensure fair administration of elections, and required the Federal Government to ``pre-clear'' certain changes in the voting laws of local jurisdictions.

That law has been improved and reauthorized a number of times--as recently as last year--and is a cornerstone of our democracy. Nevertheless, as we all know, efforts to suppress the vote persist and continue to erode the promise of democracy for many Americans. For example, in the last election cycle, we saw organized efforts to deceive voters by sending out fliers with false information about the location of polling places or with phony endorsements, we saw threats that immigrants could be imprisoned if they voted.

The Judiciary Committee, under the wise leadership of Chairman Leahy, has responded with the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, which would criminalize various forms of voter intimidation and election misinformation.

In recent years, we have also seen the rise of another voter suppression tactic, which has come to be known as ``vote caging.'' Caging is a voter suppression tactic whereby a political campaign sends mail marked ``do not forward/return to sender'' to a targeted group of voters--often targeted into minority neighborhoods. The campaign then challenges the right of those citizens whose mail was returned as ``undeliverable'' on the grounds that the voter does not live at the registered address. Of course, as the Presiding Officer knows, there are many reasons why a piece of mail might be ``returned to sender'' that have nothing whatsoever to do with the voter's eligibility. For example, a voter might be an active member of the armed services and stationed far from home or a student lawfully registered at their parents' address. Even a typographical error during entry of the voter's registration information might result in a ``false negative.'' Nevertheless, these individuals end up facing a challenge to their vote and possibly losing their right to vote.

Caging came into the media spotlight this summer during Congress's investigation into the political dismissal of U.S. attorneys, but this practice is not new, and it is not rare. In fact, since 1982, the Republican National Committee has been operating under a consent decree, filed in New Jersey U.S. District Court, which states that the RNC shall ``refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities.''

This consent decree was entered into after the Republican National Committee, during the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial election, initiated a massive voter-caging operation, sending mailers marked ``do not forward'' to voters in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods throughout the State. The Republican National Committee then compiled a caging list based solely on the returned letters and challenged these voters at the polls. They did it again in Louisiana, in 1986, when the Republican National Committee hired a consultant to send 350,000 pieces of mail marked ``do not forward'' to districts that were mostly African American, and the consent decree was then modified to require the U.S. District Court in New Jersey to preclear any so- called ballot security programs undertaken by the Republican National Committee.

However, in part because the Federal consent decree does not apply to State parties or other campaigns, caging has continued. During the past few election cycles, there has been credible evidence of caging in Ohio, in Florida, in Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. Not every caging operation has been successful, but the failure of a voter suppression attempt is no excuse for it. Therefore, I am introducing the Caging Prohibition Act, which would prohibit challenging a person's eligibility to vote--or to register to vote--based on a caging list. Simply put, eligible voters should not fear their right to vote might be challenged at the polls because a single piece of mail never reached them.

The bill would also require any private party who challenges the right of another citizen to vote--or to register to vote--to set forth in writing, under penalty of perjury, the specific grounds for the alleged ineligibility. The principle here is simple: If you are going to challenge one of your fellow citizen's right to vote, you should at least have cause and be willing to stand behind it.

I am very proud of the extraordinary group of Senators who have agreed to be original cosponsors of this piece of legislation: Chairman Leahy of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Feinstein, Senator Dodd, Senator Kerry, Senator Feingold, Senator Schumer, Senator Nelson of Florida, Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, Senator Menendez, Senator Brown, and Senator Klobuchar. I was proud to work closely with the Brennan Center for Social Justice and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to develop the language of this bill. I would also like to thank People for the American Way for its support of this legislation.

In the 1964 case of Reynolds v. Sims, the U.S. Supreme Court stated:

[T]he right to exercise the franchise in a free and

unimpaired matter is preservative of other basic civil and

political rights. . . .

In other words, every right we have depends upon the right to vote. Organized voter-suppression efforts, including vote-caging schemes, infringe on this right and undermine our democracy. Congress should rise to the occasion and say ``enough is enough'' to vote caging.

I thank my many distinguished colleagues who have cosponsored this bill, and I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in stopping this nefarious voter suppression activity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is an unfortunate reality that with so much at stake in the ballot box, organized efforts to suppress the vote go nearly as far back as the right to vote itself. These efforts have cast a shadow over what Justice Earl Warren called ``the essence of a Democratic society'': the right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice.

The first voter suppression in America was direct: blanket restrictions based on race, based on gender, based on class. Over the years, these overt efforts were eventually replaced by more indirect and nefarious means: poll taxes, literacy tests, Whites-only primaries, and myriad other disenfranchisement laws aimed directly at minority voters. These crafty legal obstacles were often supplemented by blunt physical violence. But despite the many and varied efforts to impede the franchise, American democracy has shown an extraordinary resilience--and the American people have shown an abiding dedication, sometimes paying with life and limb, to defend the right of their fellow citizens to vote.

This Senate, of course, has a checkered past on voting rights. For many years, the Senate is where civil rights bills came to die, stalled by filibusters and tangled in parliamentary technique. Eventually, of course, the tide turned, and Congress ushered in a series of laws that remain among the most important ever enacted: the 24th amendment banning poll taxes; the Civil Rights Act; and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned literacy tests, authorized the Attorney General to appoint Federal voting examiners to ensure fair administration of elections, and required the Federal Government to ``pre-clear'' certain changes in the voting laws of local jurisdictions.

That law has been improved and reauthorized a number of times--as recently as last year--and is a cornerstone of our democracy. Nevertheless, as we all know, efforts to suppress the vote persist and continue to erode the promise of democracy for many Americans. For example, in the last election cycle, we saw organized efforts to deceive voters by sending out fliers with false information about the location of polling places or with phony endorsements, we saw threats that immigrants could be imprisoned if they voted.

The Judiciary Committee, under the wise leadership of Chairman Leahy, has responded with the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, which would criminalize various forms of voter intimidation and election misinformation.

In recent years, we have also seen the rise of another voter suppression tactic, which has come to be known as ``vote caging.'' Caging is a voter suppression tactic whereby a political campaign sends mail marked ``do not forward/return to sender'' to a targeted group of voters--often targeted into minority neighborhoods. The campaign then challenges the right of those citizens whose mail was returned as ``undeliverable'' on the grounds that the voter does not live at the registered address. Of course, as the Presiding Officer knows, there are many reasons why a piece of mail might be ``returned to sender'' that have nothing whatsoever to do with the voter's eligibility. For example, a voter might be an active member of the armed services and stationed far from home or a student lawfully registered at their parents' address. Even a typographical error during entry of the voter's registration information might result in a ``false negative.'' Nevertheless, these individuals end up facing a challenge to their vote and possibly losing their right to vote.

Caging came into the media spotlight this summer during Congress's investigation into the political dismissal of U.S. attorneys, but this practice is not new, and it is not rare. In fact, since 1982, the Republican National Committee has been operating under a consent decree, filed in New Jersey U.S. District Court, which states that the RNC shall ``refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities.''

This consent decree was entered into after the Republican National Committee, during the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial election, initiated a massive voter-caging operation, sending mailers marked ``do not forward'' to voters in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods throughout the State. The Republican National Committee then compiled a caging list based solely on the returned letters and challenged these voters at the polls. They did it again in Louisiana, in 1986, when the Republican National Committee hired a consultant to send 350,000 pieces of mail marked ``do not forward'' to districts that were mostly African American, and the consent decree was then modified to require the U.S. District Court in New Jersey to preclear any so- called ballot security programs undertaken by the Republican National Committee.

However, in part because the Federal consent decree does not apply to State parties or other campaigns, caging has continued. During the past few election cycles, there has been credible evidence of caging in Ohio, in Florida, in Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. Not every caging operation has been successful, but the failure of a voter suppression attempt is no excuse for it. Therefore, I am introducing the Caging Prohibition Act, which would prohibit challenging a person's eligibility to vote--or to register to vote--based on a caging list. Simply put, eligible voters should not fear their right to vote might be challenged at the polls because a single piece of mail never reached them.

The bill would also require any private party who challenges the right of another citizen to vote--or to register to vote--to set forth in writing, under penalty of perjury, the specific grounds for the alleged ineligibility. The principle here is simple: If you are going to challenge one of your fellow citizen's right to vote, you should at least have cause and be willing to stand behind it.

I am very proud of the extraordinary group of Senators who have agreed to be original cosponsors of this piece of legislation: Chairman Leahy of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Feinstein, Senator Dodd, Senator Kerry, Senator Feingold, Senator Schumer, Senator Nelson of Florida, Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, Senator Menendez, Senator Brown, and Senator Klobuchar. I was proud to work closely with the Brennan Center for Social Justice and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to develop the language of this bill. I would also like to thank People for the American Way for its support of this legislation.

In the 1964 case of Reynolds v. Sims, the U.S. Supreme Court stated:

[T]he right to exercise the franchise in a free and

unimpaired matter is preservative of other basic civil and

political rights. . . .

In other words, every right we have depends upon the right to vote. Organized voter-suppression efforts, including vote-caging schemes, infringe on this right and undermine our democracy. Congress should rise to the occasion and say ``enough is enough'' to vote caging.

I thank my many distinguished colleagues who have cosponsored this bill, and I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in stopping this nefarious voter suppression activity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar No. 452, S. 1347.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it

stand adjourned until 10 a.m. Tuesday, November 6; that on Tuesday, following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day; that there then be a period for the transaction of morning business for 60 minutes with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each and the time equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half; that at the close of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 2419; further, that on Tuesday, the Senate stand in recess from 12:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. for the respective party conference meetings.

Mr. President, if there is no further business, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.